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The 'USS Liberty': Case Closed

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The 'USS Liberty': Case Closed AZURE - Issue #9 - Oren Page 1 of18 Azure Azure'SPRING 576* WHAT IS AZURE? The 'USS Liberty': Case Closed Michael B. Oren Early in the afternoon ofJune 8, 1967, Israeli jets and missile boats opene PAST ISSUES on the USS Liberty, an American surveillance ship opera-ting off the coast Gaza. Struck by rockets, cannons and torpedoes, the vessel suffered extens damage and over 200 casualties. Israeli forces were then engaged in the foi dayof what would soon be called the SixDay War, which wouldresuh in i devastatingdefeat for the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. AZURE IN THE MEDIA At first overshadowed by Israel's stunning victory, the attack on the LiberP destined to become a recurring source oftension between Israel and the Ui States. AlthoughIsrael apologized for the attack and paid compensation to victims, many American officials rejected Israel's claim that the Libertyinci nnnv had been an honest mistake. Rather, they blamed Israel for what was at bes inexcusable negligence, or at worst the premeditatedmurder ofAmerican servicemen. Such charges persisted in the face ofsuccessive inquiries by a I range of American agencies and Congressional committees, as well as a fill court of inquiry, all ofwhichfound no proof whatsoever that Israel knowir attacked an American ship. On the contrary, the evidence produced by thes RELATED SITES investigations lent further support to Israel's claim that its decision to attacl given the circumstances, a reasonable error. These findings notwithstanding, the case ofthe assault on the Liberty has n been closed. If anything, the accusations leveled against Israel have grown WRITE TO EDITOR with time. In recent years, an impressive number of former American offici; have gone on record insistingthat the Israeli action was, in fact, deliberate, include Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, who was Chairman ofthe Joint Chiefs o (JCS) at the time of the Liberty incident, who has labeled the episode a "co up," adding that he "cannot accept the claimby the Israelis that this was a ( mistaken identity."^ Paul C. Wamke, then Under Secretaryofthe Navy, ha: SUBSCRIPTIONS written that I found it hard to beheve that it was, in fact, an honest mistake on the part ofthe air force units.... I suspect that in the heat of battle they figured that the presence American ship was inimical to their interests....- Site Search Similarly, former Secretary ofState Dean Rusk has called the attack "outrageous," adding in a 1990 radio interviewthat "theLiberty was flying I American flag. It was not all that difficult to identify, and my judgment was http://www.shalem.org.il/azure/9-Oren.htm 12/03/2000 AZURE- Issue #9 - Oren Page 2 of18 somewhere along the line some fairly senior Israeli official gave the go- ahc these attacks....David G. Nes, who at the timeserved as deputyhead of1 American mission in Cairo, puts it morebluntly: "I don'tthinkthat there's a doubtthat it was deliberate.... [It is] one ofthe great cover-ups ofour milit history."" And George Ball, then Under Secretary of State, has called the American government's response to theassault an "elaborate charade.... Ar leaders didnot have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of i citizens. Support for these charges canbe found in a wide range of publications on1 Liberty incident. Assault on theLiberty^ a 1979 memoir byformer Liberty Jim Ennes, Jr., describes the attack as intentionaland malicious, and argues the truth hasbeenobscured by a massive cover-up conducted by Israel and advocates abroad. Thisallegation hasbeen repeated in Richard Deacon's Tt Israeli Secret Service (1977), in John Ranela^'s The Agency: The Rise an* Declineofthe CIA (1986), and in Andrew and Leslie Cockbum's Dangeroi Liaison: TheInside Story ofthe U.S.-IsraelCovertRelationship (1991). T1 cover-up theory is also central to Stephen Green's Taking Sides: America's Relationswitha Militant Israel (1984), one ofthe best-selling ofall anti-Is polemics. Nor is the charge of Israeli premeditation confined to booksaimc popular audience. It also features prominently inacademic workssuch as 7 USS Liberty: DissentingHistory V5. OfficialHistoryby historian JohnE. I (1993), as well as Donald NefiPs Warriorsfor Jerusalem: The SixDays tha ChangedtheMiddle East (1984), considered bymany scholars a standard the Six DayWar.® Indeed, so powerful is the trendtowards acceptance of I guilt for having planned the attackthat a 1995 issue of theInternationalJc ofIntelligence and Counterintelligence was able to carry the assertion of Reverdy S. Fishel that "all serious scholarship on the subject accepts Israel' assault as havmg been perpetrated quite deliberately...."' The claimthat Israel's attack on the Liberty was premeditated has also appt persistently inthe press. In 1992, nationally syndicated columnists Roland 1 and Robert Novak dedicated a column, "Twenty-Five Years ofCover-Up,' this charge. Similar accusations havebeenairedon television programs sue ABC's 20/20 and Geraldo Rivera's Now It Can Be Told? The claim is parti( widespread on the Internet, wherea search for the "USS Liberty" yields do sites, fi-om those ofArab propagandists{Birzeit.edu, Salam.org, Palestine Forever) and anti-Semitic hate mongers{The Tangled Web, Jew Watch) to award-winning USSLiberty Homepage, posted by Ennes and other veterar whilethe tenor ofthese pages may differ- the veterans abjure any anti-Sen stressing that several oftheir crewmates were Jewish - their conclusions art indistinguishable: Israelwantonly attackedthe Libertywiththe intention of every manon board, andthen thwartedattemptsto investigate the crime.'® Refuting this accusation was difficult if not impossible in the past, when th€ official records on the Liberty were designated top-secret and closed to the general public. Withthe recentdeclassification of these documents inthe L States and Israel, however, researchers have gained access to a wealth ofp sources - Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and U.S. military records, Israeli dip correspondence, and memoranda fi"om both the State Department andthe ^ http://www.shalem-org.il/azure/9-Oren.htm 12/03/2000 AZURE - Issue #9 - Oren Page 3 of18 House. With the aid ofthese materials, the attack on the Liberty can now b reconstructed virtuallyminute-by-minute and with remarkable detail. The p that emerges is not one ofcrime at all, nor even ofcriminal negligence, but string offailed communications, humanerrors, unfortunate coincidences ar equipment failures on both the American and Israeli sides - the kind oftrag senseless mistake that is all too common in the thick ofwar. The USS Liberty was cruising from Norfolk, Virginia to Abidjan on the Iv Coast when, in mid-May 1967, crisis erupted in the Middle East. Without warning, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser sent thousands oftroops the Sinai desert, ousted the UN peacekeeping forces stationed there and th< closed the Straits ofTiran - the critical waterway leading to Israel's southei ofEilat - to Israeli shipping. In weighing its response, the Israeli government consulted with President L Johnson, who, though preoccupied with the Vietnam War, was sympathetic Israel's plight. The President proposed to challenge the Tiran blockade witl international maritime convoy and on May 24, in preparation for this plan, ordered the U.S. Sixth Fleet to advance into the eastern Mediterranean. Av the danger ofbecoming embroiled in an Arab-Israeli war, however, Washir cautioned the fleet to remain, until further notice, "outside an arc whose rai 240 miles from Port Said," on the Egyptian coast." At this time, the Liberty was formally under the conmiand ofthe Sixth Flee although in practice its orders came du-ectly from the Joint Chiefs ofStaff, operating under the aegis ofthe National Security Agency (NSA). named "Rockstar," the 455-foot "Auxiliary General Technical Research Sh (agtr)," as it was euphemistically called, was in fact a signals mtelligence ve (sigint) equipped with cutting-edge listening and decoding devices. Among 294-man crew were several dozen members ofthe Naval Security Group, ^ worked below the starboard deck in an area strictly off-limits even to the L skipper, Cmdr. WilliamL. McGonagle. The ship sported large antennas am discs, but apart from four .50-caliber machine-gun mounts, it had no visibk armaments. The markings "GTR-5" were freshly painted on its bow, and fr mast flew a standard, navy-issue American flag. As the Sixth Fleet steamed toward the eastern Mediterranean, the Liberty \ for Rota, Spain. There, in addition to supplies, it took on three Marine Cor Arabic translators, augmenting the three NSA Russian-language experts all on board. Then, on May 30, McGonagle received new instructions to sail" speed" to a point just half a mile outside Egyptian and Israeli territorial wat which extended twelve and six nautical miles, respectively, from the coast, order, originating with the JCS, superseded a request by the U.S. Naval Command in Europe (cinceur) to hold the Liberty in Rota "until directed otherwise." Neither cinceur nor McGonagle was aware ofthe Liberty^ obj< later described by the Defense Department as "assuring communications be U.S. government posts... and assisting in... the evacuation ofAmerican citL Though the exact nature ofits mission remains classified, the Liberty was n http://www.shalem.org.il/azure/9-Oren.htm 12/03/2000 AZURE - Issue #9 - Oren Page 4 of18 UKCiy seiu lu iidCK iiic iiiuveiiieiii&» ui iiuups miu men ouviei dUVJ Sinai - hence the need for Arabic and Russian translators. Johnson's idea ofa convoy aimed at breaking the blockade
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